Brooke

I made it though my tennis class today. The sad news is that not only had my tennis skills not drastically improved during a nearly 11 year hiatus, they had actually gotten worse. (This makes me fear for what would happen if I tried figure skating.) The good news is that I hadn't forgotten everything.

There are six other women in the class. From what I gather, they had all been doing the previous sessions together, so I was the only newbie. There seemed to be a good relationship between them, but not really cliquish. They were nice to me. :-) This is something I've actually really excited about because I tended to do private instruction in a lot of things. Group classes may not get the individualized instruction, but there's something to be said for the social aspect. In fact, even if I really got into tennis and decided to to private lessons, I think I might also do a clinic.

We had two tennis pros and I've forgotten their names. :-) It was a pretty active class. The first part was just going across the baseline on two courts and returning three balls in different places using a forehand and then went the other way to do a backhand. After that, the exercise was to hit one on the baseline then rush back several steps and hit one father back. Same rule there (forehand one way, backhand after that.) After that, we worked on serves and then did some point play where we worked on rallying.

The interesting thing about the class is that I'm the only lefty. What that means is that when they're going from left to right working on backhands, I'm doing a forehand (and vice versa). I like being confusing.

It was an hour and a half of hard work and I figure I'll be sore tomorrow. It actually very much like an interval workout in some ways, which is good. Class was a bit annoying tonight because the grip on my racket was peeling. Apparently, ten years of neglect did no more for its condition than mine since it not only needed a new grip but new strings. I left it and it should be ready for me next week.

Overall, I may have been the worst student in class tonight, but I think that stuff will come back to me and I should be okay. I was able to keep up for the most part. I really need to exercise more regularly because this was a huge workout.

Now I need to get some studying done. All in all, though, I'm really glad I tried this and I'm actually looking forward to next week.